Jeff Skinner has had his concussion issues and should be handled with care. (Andre Ringuette/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

Just came across this tweet from Chip Alexander of the Raleigh News and Observer that left me gobsmacked.

Because of course, why wouldn’t Jeff Skinner be rushed back into the lineup for Saturday’s game against Philadelphia? That seems like a perfectly reasonable decision to make with a player who was knocked senseless after sustaining this open-ice hit from Ottawa’s Jared Cowen, right?

Especially a player who has missed stretches of both this season and last with concussion-related issues.

Muller says hopeful Skinner can play against Flyers.—
Chip Alexander (@ice_chip) April 18, 2013

Alexander later reported that Skinner actually wanted to come back after the Cowen hit and was upset with the team doctor for not clearing him. And you know, that’s great. You want a potential franchise player like Skinner to have that hunger, to desperately want to get back into the battle with his teammates.

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By Allan Muir

The way Brendan Shanahan saw it, Anton Volchenkov had a choice. With Brad Marchand squarely in his sights, he could have blasted the Boston winger with a legal check, or he could have done something stupid.

Volchenkov went with Plan B. And so the New Jersey defender will sit out four critical stretch games.

Shanahan’s video explanation captured what everyone who watched the play saw. This was a cheap shot that could, and should, have been avoided.

“Rather than make a full body check, Volchenkov extends his elbow, making significant contact to the side of Marchand’s head,” Shanahan said. “Although Marchand…is stopping and turning his head away from Volchenkov to avoid the full force of the impending check, that doesn’t contribute or explain the reckless elbow contact to the head on what could’ve been a legal collision. He sees Marchand clearly, and if anything, Marchand’s actions just prior to contact forced Volchenkov to extend his elbow even further.”

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Evgeni Malkin is reeling after taking a big hit in last night’s game against Florida. [Gene J. Puskar/AP]

We don’t yet know exactly how badly Evgeni Malkin was injured after brutally slamming his head into the boards in last night’s game against the Panthers. But we do know that our early fears have been confirmed. This, from Rob Rossi at the Pittsburgh Tribune:

Evgeni Malkin is experiencing concussion symptoms, including severe headache and mild disorientation, multiple sources confirmed Saturday. Malkin was injured early in the third period of the Penguins’ win over Florida at Consol Energy Center on Friday. He did not finish the game after sliding into the end-zone boards. The back of his head appeared to bounce off the boards, and Malkin’s neck snapped back in a seeming whiplash motion.

A team source said Malkin was out of the lineup for Sunday’s home game against the Lightning. After that? Who knows. A mild concussion may mean he’s out for a matter of days. But as the Pens know all too well from Sidney Crosby’s brain injuries, these things can be wildly unpredictable. At this point, we just have to hope for the best.

It’s worth noting that no one involved thought that Erik Gudbranson’s hit was dirty in any way.

“I just finished my check,” Gudbranson said after the game. “You never want to see a guy go down. He’s in a vulnerable position. But you can’t pass up a hit. Its unfortunate that he got hurt on the play, but it’s one I’d make every time.”

Is the time now for the NHL to take further action for player safety? (Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

There’s been talk in and around the league for years about the possibility of widening the size of the current playing surface.

The game’s getting faster, the thinking goes. The players are getting bigger. It’s too easy to diminish the impact of skill players … and there’s a greater chance than ever of getting seriously hurt.

It’s a radical idea that will demand serious debate.

Especially if another sport beats the NHL to the punch.

According to this story in the National Football Post by Chicago Tribune writer Dan Pompei, the National Football League has considered widening its playing field in the past year and could re-examine the issue again at meetings ahead of the annual draft combine.

The reasons for the big dog of American sports to consider such a dramatic change sound pretty familiar.

“Some believe NFL players have outgrown their field, which is part of the problem with head injuries,” Pompei writes. “The thinking is a wider field would spread out bodies over more space, reducing hits in the middle of the field. The down the field game wouldn’t change much, but box play could be considerably different.

“[Canadian Football League-width] fields also may encourage faster, more athletic, and smaller players because covering ground would become a more valued asset.”

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NHL GMs have been moving cautiously toward improved safety, trying not to alter the game’s nature. (Grant Halverson/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

An alarming spike in concussions earlier this season caused some NHL general managers to propose rolling back rule changes and possibly returning the game to the somnolent Dead Puck Era, but as of mid-Tuesday afternoon there seemed to be little coming out of their Boca Raton Florida meetings that indicates they favor stiffer penalties or longer suspensions for players who willfully target an opponent’s head.

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The NHL game is faster because the players are in better shape and there’s less obstruction to slow them. (Jeanine Leech/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

The NHL’s general managers will gather for their annual March meeting next week and hints have been dropped by some to members of the media that they’d like to revisit the rule that makes possible one of hockey’s most exciting plays — the two-line stretch pass that leads to a breakaway.

Ostensibly, this would be the GMs’ way of helping address the game’s concussion problem, the idea being that the NHL has gotten too fast in part because the two-line pass increases players’ speed and thus the force of collisions and the possibility of concussions. But various league sources say the GMs as a group won’t allow this rule — if it makes it onto the agenda — to be overturned. While there is certainly ongoing concern about concussions, the notion that the game is going to be somehow slowed to prevent them is not the direction the majority of managers want to take. Some of the less progressive GMs are still trying to turn back the clock, but they are in the minority.

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A better helmet would not have stopped the internal action in Sidney Crosby’s skull that caused his concussion. (Jeanine Leech/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

Last month, we spoke with Hockey Hall of Famer Ken Dryden, who has been publicly discussing his concerns about concussions and traumatic brain injuries in hockey. Nearly every time this subject comes up, emails arrive and comments are posted here wondering why the sport does not merely improve the helmet, which should go a long way toward solving the problem.

So it was worth a phone call to Minnesota to discuss that question and some other concussion-related topics in hockey with  the Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Michael Stuart, that institution’s  Vice-Chair of Orthopedic Surgery and the co-director of its Sports Medicine Center. Dr. Stuart is also the Chief Medical Officer of USA Hockey and a hockey dad — he has three sons who have played in the NHL: Mike, who played briefly with the Blues; Mark, with the Bruins and now with the Jets; and Colin, with the Thrashers and Sabres. Colin is currently captain of Buffalo’s Rochester AHL team.

Dr. Stuart is certainly a good person to evaluate the helmet issue, even as manufacturers claim their new designs will help limit concussions. He, along with his colleague at the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Aynsley Smith, created the first Ice Hockey Summit: Action on Concussions  in Oct. 2010, to specifically address this rising problem in the sport. They plan a second such summit in the Fall of 2013.

“One of the conclusions of the group, and also the prioritized action items of this summit, was to look at hockey helmets,” Dr. Stuart told Red Light. ”I’m not giving up on them. I think we need to continue to look at materials, designs and novel technologies. But the bottom line is the hockey helmet does what it was designed to do, which is to prevent skull fractures and intracranial bleeding.

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Sidney Crosby’s injury is the most high-profile on the Penguins, who lead the NHL in man-games lost to injury. Yet they’re still winning, which isn’t true of other similarly battered teams. (Jeanine Leech/Icon SMI)

By Stu Hackel

It’s back to work for the NHL after a long weekend of All-Star frivolity. But even amidst the laughs, pranks and ridiculous amounts of skill coming out of Ottawa, the cloud of injury — to players’ brains and otherwise — continued to darken the league’s sunny skies.

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Will there come a time when people look back and wonder why more wasn’t done to stop concussions? (Chaz Palla/AP)

By Stu Hackel

It was another bad week for concussions in the NHL. Sidney Crosby, who many hoped would be back in the Penguins’ lineup by now, is still unable to practice. Unsure of his return, he sought help from a specialist in Atlanta and is seeing another in California. Center Danny Briere was concussed in Saturday’s game against the Devils. He’s the sixth Flyer to suffer that injury this season.  Teammate James van Riemsdyk is still sidelined; Chris Pronger is out for the rest of the season, maybe longer, and his wife Lauren went public with their struggles (video). The Jets’ leading goal scorer, Evander Kane, joined the ranks late last week. The Bruins’ Marc Savard (photo above), whose career is in doubt after repeated concussions, disclosed the problems he’s having with headaches and memory.

When 28 players were concussed in December, we titled our post on the subject  ”An Awful Month for NHL Concussions.” The way Hockey Hall of Famer Ken Dryden sees it, however, it would be a mistake to believe that this epidemic of head injuries is a temporary condition, and that the game will get past it the way one gets over a cold. We’re better off thinking that this painful situation is the way things in the NHL will continue to be.

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The Rangers and the Bruins have clearly been the class of the NHL so far. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

By Stu Hackel

The NHL’s  regular season is at the halfway point. A number of teams have hit the 41-game mark and the 615th contest of the 1230-game schedule was played on Monday. So here are some things that have struck us so far, in no particular order.

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